Here’s ours:

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Wildwood Interactive<br />

My favorite part of this year (besides losing 35 pounds. is all the new friends we’ve made, personally, and as a company.  It’s hands-down the best part of being in business; meeting incredible people, having wonderful conversations, sharing, supporting, learning, connecting.

We can’t wait to see what next year brings.  How about you?

Below is a little Christmas play list I made on a website I discovered today, thanx to my new Twitter buddy @andrewcareaga.  I’m looking forward to checking out this website a little more after the holiday season, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy the songs I’m embedding here.

Happy Holidays to all our friends!

Christmas Is Runnin Me Over!

Anyway, I clicked on it just for fun, cuz that’s the kind of girl I am. I was properly rewarded for my behavior, as I’m quite sure the GRIN on my face is going to stay there the rest of the day.

The greeting was created by First Round Capital with lots of help from their friends. (If you’re from Austin, you might recognize BazaarVoice.) They’re included, showing their rhythm and special moves.

Who’s your favorite set of dancers? For the scenery, I’m with the group on the beach. For dancers? Well, I’ll let YOU say who you liked.

Enjoy, and thanx to Brad Feld for blogging about this.

Stay tuned for another blog soon about a great piece of marketing that’s gotten some pretty viral attention recently.

Here’s the post if you want to read it: http://snipurl.com/8o1vq-calc

It sounds like something that has come out of my mouth many more times than once to myself and many other friends.

I have more phrases to add to that list. Here’s a few:

I have to
I should
I shouldn’t
I need to

These phrases, along with the “I can’t” phrase, give up your personal power.

Each day, we have more choice than we really admit to having. With choice comes responsibility, and maybe that’s why these phrases get used. It’s easier to say “I can’t”, as if someone in authority has taken away our right to move in some direction. “I have to” implies an obligation there’s no way around. “I should” or “I shouldn’t” makes me ask “Who said so, who’s in charge? Why are ‘they’ ruling you?”

Say these words instead:
I choose to
I choose not to
I don’t want to
I prefer not to
I’d like to
I’d love to
It’s not a fit for me
I’d rather not

Those are honest phrases. Those change the energy inside your head and outside in your environment. There’s a million choices for phrases that convey the same information, but allow you to admit to yourself and demonstrate to others that you are in control of your life.

Try this: “I should lose weight” vs. “I want to lose weight.” vs “I will lose weight.” There’s only a single, seemingly subtle word difference in those phrases, but that one word can make all the difference in your world.

Be committed, not just an observer in your own world. You choose, and let the world know you choose, because you can.

Thank you, @DonnaKozik for this reminder today, and for inspiring this blog!

First a quick disclaimer. This post has a very boring title, and the reason for its boring title has everything to do with its existence in the first place. “Web site management and marketing” has a high number of searches relative to its number of search engine results. The high ratio of searches to results makes it easier to rank well than a title with a lower ratio of searches to results.

So now let’s talk about online marketing. The best online marketing you can do is increase the volume of good, useful content on your website. All else equal, your site will perform better with search engines the larger its volume of valuable information.

You’re an expert in your field. Show it. Create valuable website content that informs, instructs, and/or entertains about your area of expertise. By sharing your knowledge, you’ll not only increase your visibility with search engines, you’ll demonstrate value to your potential customer once they arrive at your site. A shoe store site, whether it sells shoes online or not, should be packed with unique, meaningful content about selecting, purchasing, and wearing shoes.

Sure creating good content takes time, money, or both, but create new content for your site as often as you can afford to do it. You’ll find that by working at it consistently you’ll amass quite a volume quicker than you think.

Ok, so you don’t consider yourself a good writer or you just hate to do it. Get help. You may be surprised how affordably you can get good copywriting help. You can find someone to edit what you start or you can brain dump to your copywriter and have her write the copy for you.

Creating original content should be the most difficult part of getting the content you create on the web. You shouldn’t have to go to a web development firm to publish your writing on your site. A content management system will give you the freedom to update your site with great information when you want to without having to pay to have it done. If you don’t already have a content management system on your site, we can help with recommendations and/or help implement one.

Get started writing about what you do, work on it consistently, and get it on your website for the world to enjoy. You’ll profit from doing so.

A significant security issue has been found in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. The Washington Post reports that 69% of users access the internet using Microsoft Explorer, making this a significant issue. They are also reporting that it has impacted over 2 million computers worldwide already.

Microsoft has advised Internet Explorer users to use an alternative browser until it has patches for IE 7. If you’d like to read the technical bulletin, here’s a link to it:

http://budurl.com/msiesecurity

Since this bulletin was released, reports indicate that the same vulnerability is also in IE 6 and IE 5.

The reports indicate that a user does not have to click on a link or download any software. Instead, the user only has to open an infected web page.

So far, the attacks seem to be centered in China, and are being exploited to steal gaming passwords, however, theft of personal information such as administrative computer passwords, and financial data could occur.

These articles provide some additional information:
http://budurl.com/iewashpost
http://budurl.com/ieguardian

The Washington Post article listed above has links to security bulletins and workarounds.

If you want a list of more articles about this issue, you can go here to search Google News:
http://budurl.com/iegoogle

If you want to try an alternative, now is a GREAT time to switch to our personal favorite, Firefox.

Here’s a link to the download:
http://budurl.com/firefoxdownload

If you’d like to know what other browsers are available, here’s a list of some of them:
http://budurl.com/browsers

There are suggestions in the various articles, including the Microsoft bulletins, about how to reduce your vulnerability in general when using the Internet. Of course, these should always be heeded, but we’d strongly advise considering this extra step of at least temporarily installing and using another browser until Microsoft sorts this out.

I got an email today from rimmkaufman.com about this toy tool called Wordle. http://budurl.com/wordlesite (Wordle.net)

Paste text in it, put in a URL, or enter a delicious.com username, and generate a tag cloud. You can print the result, or add it to their gallery. Choose randomize the image to recreate the layout. Change the colors, too. I picked a few colors off our website. It was interesting to see that I picked one orange, but there’s several shades of orange here.

I put our blog feed URL in it. I like that lighthouse, online, business, share, approach, and create stand out on the results.

What would yours create? If you create one & send it to me at cj at wildwoodinteractive.com I will post it here.

According to Comscore, 2008 online retail sales are down 2% from 2007 for the month of November. However, Cyber Monday showed a 15% increase over 2007.

We’re wondering if the actual date of Cyber Monday impacted these numbers, making 2008 look initially worse. In 2007, Cyber Monday was on November 26th. This year, it was on December 1st. That’s 5 full days of After Thanksgiving shopping in November that didn’t happen until December of this year.

We suspect heavy discounting and lots of free shipping offers are also creating some of the rush this year.

Our prediction? We think there will be increased online holiday sales this year even though overall total holiday sales will be lower. We believe it’s one more indicator of the increased use of online shopping.

“Figure out who your target customers are, figure out what you’re really good at. Then focus, focus, focus on attracting and servicing those customers with your unique offering.”

I visualize a proper approach to marketing and business strategy as a lighthouse. A lighthouse is built to address a particular concern for a particular customer. Its mission is to protect boats from smashing into a hazard, or perhaps to guide them to shore. It’s equipped well to do this. From a building that stays in one place, a bright light exudes that moves in a pattern which covers its territory well. It doesn’t protect boats from the next hazard or guide them into the next harbor. Another lighthouse does that. It focuses all its energy on that one area. Each lighthouse is unique, each lighthouse has its own beauty, its own purpose.

I visualize the other approach to marketing and business, which is trying to be all things to as many people as possible, as a man running up and down the shore with flashlights. He has several flashlights, one for each type of customer. He finds it necessary to cover large amounts of territory, too. His light isn’t nearly as bright as the lighthouse, and he can’t take a specific stand. Instead, he exhausts himself running back and forth, afraid to leave any area uncovered for too long. While this approach may guide some boats to shore, or protect some boats from hazards, the man doing the guiding and protecting will have to create a somewhat custom solution for each boat approach. Sure, he’ll eventually cover most of the custom situations if he lasts long enough. Then he could stand to gain some efficiencies, some economies of scale, but only if he hasn’t completely worn himself out first with all that running, lightbulb changing, and guiding. Another looming danger for the Flashlight man? He can confuse his customers so thoroughly, they decide to go just a little bit further downshore for the sure bet of a steady lighthouse, even wh.

What does your marketing strategy and business plan look like? How do your potential clients view you and your offering? Are you an exhausting, flickering, flashlight, powered by an endless amount of non-reproducible energy, or a steady, strong lighthouse shining its light in a predictable pattern so your prospects have a chance to figure out if you’re right for them, steering their boats in exactly your direction?

This month’s Gadget Girl column is called “Fun Tops the List”.  Stretch your holiday dollar, practice playing together so next year we can all work together, and create fun, lasting memories.  How?  By making more than one person happy with a single gift.

http://www.budurl.com/awm200812b